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My First Cheesy Job - Junior High Math Tutor

11/29/2011

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.Korvettes, where I spent my paycheck.
_  My first cheesy job was as a summer school math tutor to junior high kids. The whole thing was pretty ironic, considering I was dumped from the honors program at my junior high because I did so poorly in algebra. I scored in the top 2 percent of students in the country on my English exams, but they insisted I had to be enrolled in advanced placement math and advanced placement English to be considered an "honor" student. It was all or nothing, so in the eighth grade I was back in class  with all the stoners and future sluts of America. Yeah, I know, back where I belonged. Ha, ha!

I was 15 so my Dad had to get me a work permit. He sprung the job on me because it was there, not because we particularly needed extra money. I wanted more money to buy albums. Even at 3 for $12 at Korvettes I always left out a few favorites every week. Being a studious, fledgling writer, I  asked if I could tutor an English class instead, but apparently the only summer school classes were for math dummies.

My job was eight a.m to noon Monday through Friday for all of July and a few weeks in August. I wasn't thrilled about getting up early in the summer. Even at 10, 11 years old I was notorious for staying up til the wee hours of the morning listening to talk radio. Yes, they had even it in the '70s. Since my Dad worked as an engineer at the same school, I had a ride to and from the job every day.

The math teacher was a dry, boring woman with short blonde hair. She taught the algebra class that I had failed. (Does this make any sense? ) I brought a book or magazine with me everyday and sat at the back of the classroom, reading, for four hours. I think I tutored one student the whole summer. A few times a week a cute blonde kid would feign integer ignorance so he could sit in the back and gab with me. We'd talk about music or the articles in the Time or Newsweek or whatever magazine I was reading that day. I think he was 13. He kinda had a crush on me--see, younger men have always liked me! Eventually, the teacher figured out we were just goofing around and forbade him from sitting in the back of the room.


I got paid $2.10 hour. I think it rounded off to $40.00 a week after taxes. All in all, not a bad first job. Didn't have to do much, could sit around and read for a few hours and get paid for it. Little did I know that my life as a peon worker would get more lurid and ridiculous with each new job.

 


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Sweet Memories of the '60s - Retro Candy and Other Treats

11/19/2011

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The band took its name from this peanut butter & caramel concoction and/or a type of moonshine liquor.
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Not named after the Kelis song.
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1960s Grab Bag from GroovyCandies.com
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After perusing the candy & snack foods section of Walgreens on a lunch hour last week, bombarded by breath mints, sugarless gum, and rice cakes, I started thinking about all the sugar-saturated goodies from my childhood, I won't - or in some cases, can't, eat anymore. Candy necklaces are now replaced by Fruit Roll-Ups, healthy cereals and vegan bouillon cubes shaped like Angry Birds. (Only kidding about the bouillon cubes.)


When I e-mailed my 30 and 40 -something friends about their most beloved childhood candies, I received such non-commercial replies as "Remember those sugar dots on paper and you'd rip 'em off and there'd be paper on the bottom of em (Yummy!)" or "I used to love those wax sticks with extra sugary liquid inside." Occasionally, you see mock versions of these favorites in 59 cent packs by the check-outs of small supermarkets, along with other 60's standards. There are knock-off versions of chocolate wrapped like gold coins, candy and bubble gum cigarettes, Bazooka and Blackjack gum, and Chiclet gum in tiny burlap bags hovering near check-out counters of Bodegas and 7-11s nationwide. 


Trading candy was a subculture among kids in the 1960s. We swapped Slo-pokes and Milk Duds like teeny-bop magazines and baseball cards. Cartoon characters were devised to sell sugary cereals, not vice versa. TV commercials introduced us to Quisp and Quake, the twerpy alien figure and the brawny he-man, not to mention Boo Berry and Count Chocula. Growing up in the 1960s, even some of the "bad" food we enjoyed had historical significance. For example, astronauts were a big thing, moon walks and all. Once my friends and I tried to emulate them by eating a lunch of Space Food Sticks and Tang...the only space-walking we did was to the bathroom.

Or how about the do it yourself treats? Incredible Edibles consisted of a mold and some gooey liquid- you'd pour it in, plug the contraption in and -waa-laa- an hour later- tooth decay!! Also on the must-have list - Easy Bake Ovens, as well as cotton candy makers featured in the back pages of the Sears Christmas Catalog. All of this punctuated by the smell of Crackerjack being created as we drove past the Crackerjack factory on on the way to Cubs games. But there was a definite and painful price for candy binges. I once ate a six pack or regular size Hershey bars in one sitting. A week later I was at the dentist for five fillings. Not to be outdone, my brother ate a whole pack of Baby Ruths one Halloween and was sick for a week. Aah, the days of sugar overload -a bonding experience for  kids who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s.



I worked in the candy section of a Montgomery Wards in high school. Along with my co-workers, an aspiring actress and amateur filmmaker, I sprinted back and forth in the cubicle on nights and weekends. We must have run a marathon each by the end of the week, serving up Sno-Cones, butter-slathered popcorn and peanut-filled chocolate wedges that weighed a pound each. We scooped up bags of miniature Heath bars, jelly rings, peanut butter cups and Jolly Ranchers to polyester-clad housewives, Little Leaguers and scores of our Monkee Wards co-workers. The other store clerks loved to spend their break time getting a sugar rush and kibitzing with us about our creative projects. We were quite the store celebrities. (So, a writer, an actress and a filmmaker walk into a bar…) My co-workers and I pilfered a few candies here and there, but we didn't gain any weight. Running back and forth fetching candy that would render the customers hefty pared the weight off us.

Now candy is a kitsch thing, (there's a Pez museum in California), a snob thing (tangerines dipped in gourmet chocolate and such), or totally verboten by politically correct lawmakers and rice cake toting Super Moms. It’s interesting to note that  most kids growing up in the 1960s and 1970s – even ‘80s kids who occasionally devoured Dweebs candies and Bar-None chocolate- didn’t become obese, develop ADHD or fall prey to other health problems like today’s kids. Kids back then played outside after school, riding bikes or walking to the mall instead of texting or sitting at a computer. Yeah, they watched lots of TV, but playing outside counteracted a lot of that inactivity.

 Indulging in candy used to be a fun thing, a secret society for kids. I guess you might call the “sugar high” from candy a prelude to the “highs” we got from other things once adolescence hit. Sweets were a rite of passage, at least until the purchase of that first Tiger Beat made the candy counter at Wards passé.






















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